The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (98 page)

1–In Feb. 1921 the
Athenaeum
was absorbed by the
Nation
, leaving RA temporarily without a job.

2–Desmond MacCarthy was literary editor of the
NS
, 1920–7.

3–TSE, ‘A Victorian Sculptor’,
NS
, 23 Mar. 1918; ‘New Philosophers’, 13 July 1918.

4–The coal-miners’ strike which began on 1 Apr. continued until 1 July.

MS
Houghton

14 April 1921

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dearest Mother,

I have your letter of March 27 and am replying now, lest the strike dislocate the mails. It is certain to be settled somehow before you sail.

I am very glad you transferred to the
Adriatic
, June 1st. How glad we shall be when you are safely over. I did not wish to urge you to prolong your stay at the
other
end, as August is a good month on the sea, and June
should
be a good month here.

I suggest that you should have your letter of credit made out so that
either
you or Marian can draw on it, in case of an emergency, and also to save you from going to the City (business part of town) whenever you want money. If you get it from the Old Colony you can have it made out on Lloyds Bank so that I could help you with it.

You will have Henry given the necessary powers to act for you in your absence.

As to Paris, we shall see when the time comes whether you feel up to that. I have made no plans for that holiday, waiting to make them with you. There are all sorts of nice places I have thought of, depending on how far we go, country or town etc. It was advisable to have France on your passports, however.

I do not want you to exert yourself at all over my books. They are not worth one minute of fatigue on your part. Only if Shef could get them ready
at his leisure
I should be very grateful to you.

The other little flat we should use is very cosy and in some respects nicer than ours, so you have no cause to worry about that. It is settled that you are to be here.

I sent you my Marvell a few days ago. I have to give a lecture next week to a literary club [at Caxton Hall]. I am sorry I promised to do so – several months ago. I shall not waste much time on it.

I say this now – please have Henry cable to me when you sail to let me know you have started. Or
just
before. I shall feel more contented to have him come to New York with you in any case.
Do not start fatigued
, and remember that Marian is bound to worry about you, and spare her by doing
much less
than you feel you
can
do.

You are of course to have breakfast in bed every morning, the later the better, for Ellen!

Must stop now.

Your devoted son
Tom.

Vivien would have been not only disappointed but anxious if you were at an hotel.

MS
Cornell

Saturday [16? April 1921]

[London]

Dear Lewis,

Thank you very much for the
Tyro
¹
which has just arrived; I am writing at once before reading it as I should like to say some things in reference to the conversation last night. I think the
Tyro
has a very good appearance indeed this time. But my first thought on looking at the reproductions was that it is and has always been a pity that you have associated yourself with so many inferior artists. It seems to me that the idea of a group may have been all right once, but that
now
it is just wrong for you – that you should
dis
sociate yourself, in the public mind, from any group and from all other British painters. I think that this way of making associates of Dobson, Wadsworth etc. gives them a certain power to damage
you
– i.e. you drag them up to your level and give them a kind of chance to repudiate
you.
(
Would I think of contributing to Wheels?
and so give the S[itwells] a lift and the right to sneer at me?)
I
think that you ought to emphasise your isolation.
²
When I looked through the illustrations just now rather carefully I felt that it almost looked as if you were disparaging your own work in putting it alongside that of these people.

Now as to Paris. I can’t feel that there is a great deal of hope in your going there permanently. Painting being so much more important in Paris, there are a great many more clever second-rate men there (and the
second-rate
men are so infinitely
cleverer
than the second-rate men here) to distinguish oneself from. Then you know what ruthless and indefatigable sharpers Frenchmen are; in comparison the methods of Dobson etc. being only schoolboy tricks. Are they likely even to refrain from interfering with you?? If you do go to Paris (for a time) the best way seems to me to live in retirement there and just work and get some things done for an exhibition here. (Your last one was a success in spite of being hurried and had a very good press). I think it is a good thing to get out of people’s way and not
be seen for some time, not see any of the Chelsea people etc. Separate oneself from the ‘young’ whose company is only a taint on one – but as a matter of fact you could do that as effectively in London as in Paris, and I cannot help feeling that this temporary retirement would at this point be your wisest course.

If you are going away this week let me know in time so that we can arrange a meeting first.

Yours ever
T.S.E.

1–
Tyro: A Review of the Arts of Painting, Sculpture and Design
(1921) included TSE’s ‘Song to the Opherian’ (signed Gus Krutzsch) and ‘Notes on Current Letters’. In addition to four illustrations by WL, there were reproductions of works by William Roberts, David Bomberg and Frank Dobson.

2–
Wheels
, a series of annual poetry anthologies, 1916–22, was a platform for the Sitwell trio and friends inc. AH. TSE wrote, in an unsigned review of
Wheels: A Third Cycle:
‘Every one of the writers of
Wheels
must make a choice. They can either hang together, and make a small place for themselves in the history of literature by being the interesting fashion of a day, or they can choose to run the risk of being individuals’ (‘The Post-Georgians’, A., 11 Apr. 1919).

PC
Beinecke

20 April 1921

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

If you cared to take the trouble to come to Caxton Hall tomorrow night I should of course be delighted, but it will be a very poor address, as I have had very little time.

Sincerely
T. S. Eliot

MS
Northwestern

22 April 1921

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear John,

I was glad to hear that you will be in England next month, if only for a short time, and send you my new address. I was also glad to have a letter from you, and to get a copy of your article for the
New Republic
¹
for which I thank you. It is on the whole the best review I have had. For one thing it calls attention to the only part of that book which seems to me of any permanent value. I think that the essays on Jonson, Massinger, Marlowe and Dante are the best. ‘The Perfect Critic’ I should not wish to reprint. I should prefer to reprint the papers that I like in some more homogeneous volume; I envisage 1. An Elizabethan volume. 2. A
seventeenth
Century volume to Pope with a
Nachblick
[glance] at Collins and Johnson. 3. A volume containing analyses of my favorite poets in French,
German, Italian and the Classics. 4. Perhaps a volume on the present day. This seems to me at present all the critical prose I shall ever want to do. It is true that I have started a poem. But Vivien has been very ill. Eight weeks in bed so far, and I shall be occupied this summer with my mother who will be here.

I thought I identified an article on Baudelaire as yours.
²
It struck me as the best thing I have seen in English on a poet whom I admire immensely. The Swinburne–Symons illusion of him (more Symons) has taken hold and will be difficult to dislodge, but this article is an important step forward.

I do not know whether you disapproved of me or not, but I was convinced that you had since a certain period lost all desire to see me, and all interest in myself. The reasons for this were a matter of conjecture; it seemed on the surface capricious, but I did not doubt that reasons existed, in your own mind. But we shall soon meet, I trust, and discuss many things. Your idea of a note book strikes me as a very good one, and it ought to be possible to produce such a thing at very small cost. Whether it would sell is another matter. But I think the best thing now would be, if there were several modest periodicals on the market, involving little outlay, which could be left off or transformed at any time. I am too tired to write further at the moment either personally or impersonally. You do not say how long you will be here, but surely you will be in London long enough for one or two satisfactory conversations.

It is possible (not likely) that I may get to Paris for Whitsun, if I can afford it, but only for two or three days. I should not like to miss you.

Yours ever,
TSE.

Do let me know your dates as soon as possible. Will the address be printed?
³

1–JMM, ‘The Sacred Wood’,
New Republic
26 (13 Apr. 1921), 194–5. ‘Mr Eliot possesses a critical intelligence of a high order’; his manner is ‘often unfortunate, portentous and disdainful’.

2–‘Baudelaire and Decadence’,
TLS,
7 Apr. 1921, 217–18.

3–JMM was to give six lectures at Oxford, from 16May; published as
The Problem of Style
(1922).

MS
Beinecke

[22 April 1921]

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Jepson,

In the fatigue of last night I failed to express my thanks afterwards to you for coming and for supporting me so ably.

I know you disapprove of Elizabethan Drama, and this is not the example I should have chosen to convince you, but it may be interesting and well acted and I have this extra ticket as my wife can’t go. It’s
The Witch of Edmonton
– and Sybil Thorndyke is in it.
¹
If you care to use this I shall be glad to see you there.

Sincerely
T. S. Eliot

1–
The Witch of Edmonton
by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford, was put on by the Phoenix Society, under the direction of Montague Summers (1880–1948), at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, on 24 Apr.. Sybil Thorndyke (1882–1976) played the witch.

MS
Houghton

27 April 1921

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dearest Mother,

I have your two letters of the 12th and 15th, the former containing two clippings. I thought Murry’s very good; he sent it to me from where he is living in France. He seems to be very anxious to be friendly at present. I thought that Aiken’s
¹
was rather grudging and not the result of a conscientious study of the book. When I say ‘science’ he assumes that I mean ‘psychology’ because he is interested in that superstitious study: and I thought I noted a desire to disparage. There was a review of one of his books of verse in the
Dial
a couple of months ago, showing by parallel passages how much he had borrowed or stolen from me.
²

I also received a few days ago your registered letter with the Hydraulic cheque in it, for which I thank you. It is good that the Hydraulic has been able to keep on paying dividends in the midst of the industrial depression which is very bad in America as well as here.

Now for your dividends. The simplest and best way is to instruct the company or companies to pay the dividends direct to your bank for your account. This is the
usual
way in England and I suppose it can be done in America. You get a letter of credit, not buying so much English money outright, but of such a kind that the bank debits your banking account as you draw on the letter of credit. you get the Letter of Credit for a much larger sum than you expect to need. You should also provide yourselves with some English money
before
you start – buy it from the
Bank so as not to be cheated. Get some £5 notes, some £1 notes, and some silver and copper, say £20 in all for the two of you.

I have already advised your getting your letter of credit made out so that
either
you or Marian or Henry can draw on it – so that you will not have to go ‘down town’ or as we say ‘to the City’ every time you want money. We shall see that your expenses are moderate, once you get here.

I am very glad indeed that Henry can come. It is a unique opportunity and
must
not be missed and I am delighted that you urged him to come. It will do him a world of good at a critical moment. I want him to keep up his drawing all the time.

1. Now mother dear there are
two things I want to impress on you. One
is that you are not to worry any more about being in our flat, or to go on making other plans. We shall arrange for you and for Henry in the way that is best for everyone, and only we who are on the spot can do it or can know what is best and what is feasible. So think no more about it until you get here, for you can do no good by that.
Everything is settled.

2.
The other thing
is that the coal strike will look much more alarming to you than it does from here. It may be settled before you get this letter, but
even if not
, I am sure the boats will run. The danger of a general strike is over. So do not be apprehensive or alter your sailing unless the boats are running differently. The temper of England is not revolutionary – it is only in Scotland that we see some manifestations of that spirit.

I will stop now and write again as soon as I think of more advice.

I have Baedeker’s
London
and
Great Britain
etc.

Your devoted son
Tom